Lifelines
by Inkfire
Summary: After watching her move, he now wants her to be still. Dean endeavours to draw Luna, but the restlessness in her won't be captured. A response to the Idiosyncrasies challenge on the Dark Lord's Most Faithful forum.


**Here is my entry for Rain Sky's Idiosyncrasies challenge on the Dark Lord's Most Faithful forum.**

_**Idiosyncrasies**_

_**It can center around either a romantic couple or just close kin. One or both characters consider the little quirks of the other they drives him/her crazy, as well as the character in question's response to other people's reactions to said idiosyncrasy. It can be something literal like a habit or more like a pastime that others disapprove of. I'd also like you to incorporate a location outside of Hogwarts/Ministry.**_

_**There are no pairing restrictions or requirements except that this must not be a crossover.**_

_**Word Count: 1500 max**_

**The location is Shell Cottage =)**

**Thanks to Rain Sky and Schermionie for correcting my shameful little typos!**

* * *

After only a few weeks, he asked permission to draw her.

He'd drawn many others before – Seamus, his mother, Harry on his broom during the Triwizard Tournament. Just because he liked it, he was bored, or to retain a meaningful moment… None of them had elicited such an odd longing from him before. He saw Luna walk in and out of rooms, talk about Nargles or raise her new wand, and he _knew _he had to lay her down with parchment and ink. She was not Loony anymore. She was a thing with an uncanny potential for hope and life; she was erratic and bizarre, and he needed to decipher the subtle lines of her. When he asked, she laughed and said, "Yes, Dean, of course."

Within minutes, his hand was a tight, frustrated fist around the pencil. She did try her best to keep still, he would give her that. And yet she shifted, a strand of hair fell against her face and as she reached up to brush it back, her fingers would begin toying with her earrings mechanically. Radish earrings, a bloody crimson – why was it they hadn't taken those from her at Malfoy Manor? Had they found the colour fitting, so ferociously bright against her pale skin; or had the oddity made them laugh, the weirdly-shaped spheres hitting her cheeks when they tossed her around like a doll, leaving bruises? She moved so much, fiddling with things and bobbing her head as she hummed, until he felt the need to scream and hurl things at her. Why couldn't she just sit motionlessly for a little while, stop fidgeting, stop smiling in that strange way of hers, and just _be_? He didn't remember her that way, from school. From the little attention he had paid her then, she had seemed quite still and staring, with huge calm eyes that looked too big for her face. And he had mocked her, thought her stupid beyond words. Now she moved in that quick, brittle way, grinning all the while as though this attitude of hers were utterly fine, normal, and not altered in the slightest. Her hands fluttered up and down like she needed to chase away some nagging creature, some shadow.

He lacked patience, the necessary time to settle down and breathe, to feel her portrait slip into life, under his fingers. He needed it done, fast, _now_, before she could fly off or be torn away.

Maybe it was what had drawn him in, the restlessness – some sort of backward reflection of what he felt inside. Or maybe not. Maybe it was her, simply and entirely Luna.

"Isn't the lead about to break?" she asked, scarcely moving her lips. He tossed the pencil across the room and Luna moved, stretching and sighing. "We can try again tomorrow," she offered.

"Tomorrow you'll be just as impossible as today," he hissed. "What is it about the word _motionless_ that you don't understand?"

"I thought you said you wanted to catch the life in me?" she responded, untroubled.

He had said that, just as he'd sketched restless people before. Now it was different somehow. Dean glared down at the floor. Perhaps it was in him that something had changed.

"It's useless," he muttered. "I'm no good."

She laughed at him. "If you were no good, the drawing would be done by now. Or you wouldn't have bothered in the first place." She was chewing on her lip, thoughtfully, when he looked up. "The Wrackspurts are all around your head, I can feel it, even without my glasses. Let it go. You're hoping something will be born from you." She grinned wider at him. "Now isn't the easiest of times to be creating life, I think. But you only need to try, and try, and try again."

He stared at her for a while, until he found the will to stand and reach out a fearful hand. She smiled and blinked fast as she took it, stepping close enough to hold.


End file.
